This application is related to the subject matter of prior-filed co-pending non-provisional application Ser. No. 09/874,481, filed Jun. 4, 2001 in the name of Eimar M. Boesjes, said application being hereby incorporated by reference as if fully set forth herein.
The used, or pre-owned, CD and DVD markets are substantial. In the US alone, it is estimated that at least 500 million used CD's are re-sold annually at an average price of $5 to $6 each, producing an estimated revenue stream of $2.5-$3 billion. Many music retailers purchase pre-owned CDs and DVDs from the public. When deciding whether to purchase a pre-owned CD from an owner, a retail clerk visually judges the quality of the CD and estimates its monetary value. This visual check is error prone. When not sufficiently schooled, or when under time pressure at the check out counter, clerks can easily make errors in judging the quality of the CD offered by the owner for purchase. As a result inferior product may be purchased. The judgment of the potential re-sale value of the CD is even more difficult. To judge the value of a CD the clerk needs to estimate what the demand is for a certain product. To do this, the clerk would need to know the market well, which is difficult with a current inventory of over 200,000 products, and at least 200,000 more historic products. As a result CDs are often purchased having little or no re-sale value. In addition, the clerk needs to know, preferably instantly, if a certain pre-owned CD is already in stock. Entering pre-owned CD into instantly-accessible computer systems is labor intensive, therefore many retailers do not do this and thus they may often purchase pre-owned CDs already in stock.
Another problem with the pre-owned CD/DVD market is that it is difficult to match supply and demand. Supply and demand are matched currently only on a per store basis. A CD is re-sold only if it is first purchased by a re-seller (usually a retailer), and then purchased from that same specific retailer. As a result, a music CD is only re-sold if a buyer for that CD comes to that specific store, checks out their inventory of used CDs and finds the CD he/she is looking for. It may very well be that the used CD that the buyer is looking for is available from another store two blocks away, but there is no way for him/her to know without going to the other store and browse the racks. If the retailers would pool their inventories of used CDs/DVDs they would increase the re-sale rate, reduce inventory, and serve their customers better. Pooling order, inventory, and sales information would enable them to properly determine purchase and re-sale prices.
An additional determinant of the value of a data product such as a CD or DVD is the integrity of the data recorded on the data product. For example, a music CD having several unplayable tracks or numerous “pops” or skips may be worth less to a potential buyer and therefore also less to a re-seller. The same would apply to a software disc having one or more corrupted files. Hardware and/or software utilities exist which may give an overall “good” or “bad” rating for a data product, but these products are limited in the level of detail of the status of the recorded data. A typical example merely reads through the sectors of a CD until reaching an unreadable sector. If such a sector is found, the reading is stopped and the CD is deemed “bad”; if the entire CD is read without finding such a sector, the CD is deemed “good”. No location information is provided for the bad sector, and no information is available at all regarding the integrity of the data in the unread sectors. Furthermore, many recorded data products such as CDs and DVDs have data sets that include error-correaction codes (ECCs), enabling data that was initially erroneously read to be re-read (perhaps multiple times, i.e., over-sampled) and the error-correaction codes used to correct the erroneously-read data. Typical readout devices for recorded data do not provide information pertaining to the degree to which any of the recorded data was over-sampled. Such information may be valuable in determining the likelihood of future failure of a recorded data product that may be presently readable (albeit with data correaction).
It is often useful when offering products for sale to have available a database of product-related information that may be accessed by sellers and/or buyers of the products. This has become even more desirable with the increasing importance of online product sales (so-called “e-commerce”). Such information (title, artist, track information, and so forth for music CDs, for example) may routinely be generated of collected in a product information database for new products, but gathering such information for older products, especially those no longer actively produced, may be problematic. Commerce in pre-owned data products coupled with data integrity evaluation provides an opportunity to gather such information. In addition, it has become desirable to develop systems wherein specific data product content may be recognized from the content itself (as opposed to a title, UPC, or the like). Any system for accomplishing this requires a database of unique identifying information for a data product (or subset thereof) based on the data content itself. Once again, such identification information may be routinely generated and provided for new data products, but only with difficulty for older data products. Commerce in used data products coupled with data integrity evaluation provides an opportunity to generate and gather such information.
It is therefore desirable to provide systems and methods for acquisition, evaluation, inventory, distribution, and/or re-sale of pre-owned recorded data products that addresses these issues. It is desirable to provide systems and methods whereby the data integrity of a data product is quantitatively evaluated, as a whole and/or by data subset. It is desirable to provide systems and methods whereby a data integrity rating, inventory information, order information, and/or sales information are used to determine purchase and/or re-sale prices for a pre-owned data product. It is desirable to provide systems and methods whereby pre-owned products acquired by a re-seller may be offered for sale to buyers through multiple other re-sellers. It is desirable to provide systems and methods whereby pre-owned products acquired by multiple other re-sellers may be offered for re-sale to a buyer through a re-seller. It is desirable to provide systems and methods whereby data integrity ratings, inventory information, order information, and/or sales information are made accessible online. It is desirable to provide systems and methods whereby data product information is collected and/or generated in conjunction with data integrity content evaluation. It is desirable to provide systems and methods whereby data product content signatures and/or other data-content-based identifiers are collected/generated in conjunction with data integrity evaluation.